Almost all commercial goods are provided with a barcode for unique and simple identification. Progress in the areas of automation and the simplification of goods recognition has resulted in the barcodes being replaced by electronic data carriers, for example auto identification devices or radio frequency identification devices. For electronic data carriers to be able to output data which is received by a detection unit, they must be located for example in an electromagnetic alternating field of the detection unit. A detection device of this type is already known from the utility model publication DE 20 2005 014 644 U1. This describes how a large enough voltage is induced in the data carriers, when the field strength of the electromagnetic alternating field is sufficiently large, for all the data carriers to be activated and data to be output.
If a large number of data carriers are located within the electromagnetic alternating field of the detection unit however, this results in a large number of simultaneous data outputs by the data carriers. The data output signals of the data carriers can then interfere with one another or are not received correctly by the detection unit.
The detection device from DE 20 2005 014 644 U1 therefore has the disadvantage that data acquisition is not possible where there is a large concentration of data carriers.